Safeguards for SYZEYXIS II

PRESS RELEASES

August 17, 2020

The executive contract for the Central Security Infrastructures sub-project of the Framework Agreement “Security, Telephony, Teleconferencing and Wiring Infrastructures” of SYZEYXIS II was signed.

The “train” of SYZEYXIS II continues to “run” at high speed, with the final destination being the digital transformation of the Public Sector. The guide of the journey is the “Information Society”, which as the executive arm of the Ministry of Digital Governance implements the entire “SYZEYXIS Public Sector Network” project on behalf of the General Secretariat for Public Administration Information Systems.

I.S. SA recently signed the executive contract for the sub-project “Central Security Infrastructure” of the Framework Agreement “Security Infrastructure / Telephony / Teleconferencing / Wiring”, which is one of the central projects of SYZEYXIS II and is co-funded by European and National resources (OP “Public Sector Reform” NSRF 2014-2020, total budget €2.520.325,21. The total project implementation time is estimated at 42 months.

It is worth noting that this is the first contract of the 33 executive contracts of SYZEYXIS II to be signed, confirming the on-schedule implementation of the overall project and paving the way for the remaining contracts expected to be signed by November.

The scope of the project is the supply, installation, development and configuration of centralized security systems (with all network interface equipment), which will provide services for:

The security of the central SIX/DC and ISP/SLA infrastructures of SYZEYXIS II
The central translation of network addresses (NAT)
The reception of the central Internet feed, the connection to GRIX and the connections to third networks (peerings) of SYZEYXIS II.

The central security system will include the necessary equipment and software and will be installed on both SIX nodes for load balancing and failover purposes. In case the communication with the security system in one SIX node is interrupted, then the corresponding equivalent central security system in the second node will fully serve the requested services for the entire SYZEYXIS II network. In addition, the other estimated network operation, security and security incident response services will also be provided.

This is a milestone project that comes to function as another “compartment” on the route to the final destination of the completion of SYZEYXIS II, with a budget of approximately 620 million euros, which has been designated by the State as a project of high economic and technological importance for the Greek State.

SYZEYXIS II concerns the creation of a single interconnection network of the information systems of the Public Sector with the main objective of providing a set of upgraded telecommunication services and infrastructure to all General Government entities for three consecutive years, thus providing coverage to approximately 34,000 points of presence housing public sector entities. In addition, they will now have broadband services at their disposal for synergy and optimal service to citizens and businesses. At the same time, public telecommunications costs will be significantly reduced due to the aggregation of demand and the exploitation of economies of scale.

From a technological point of view, SYZEYXIS II will replace the telecommunications network equipment in the whole of the public sector, over which the upgraded speeds (up to 1Gbps) that will serve the operators will “pass”. Moreover, it will cover the telephony needs of the Public Sector, in fixed and mobile telephony, with free calls between network operators, while offering a number of advanced digital services to public officials, such as telepresentation, Internet Service Provider services and, most importantly, with high security.

It is worth noting that the project is a continuation and extension (quantitative and qualitative) of the existing National Public Administration Network “SYZEYXIS”, which currently covers 4,500 points of presence of institutions. By design, it is implemented in five main sub-projects, which have a high degree of synergy with each other.